America's Memory

The sight of two uniformed individuals approaching a front door almost always ends the same. They have the unsettling and difficult job of telling loved ones that their son, daughter, husband, or wife has perished. The parents of Anthony Maddox didn’t experience that. Not at first anyway. His father, Jerome Maddox, received the initial call that there’d been an accident and Anthony had suffered burns on 50% of his body. Jerome updated his wife Frances as they waited for more information. Anthony’s mother, Glenda Key, looked at her husband, Ron, as he took a similar call with similar news. She noticed the shock on his face but thought the call was about another family member that had been sick. All four began a series of phone calls searching for answers. Each call seemed to deliver worse news. They planned for travel to meet Anthony wherever he was. The Army had transported him to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany with plans to transfer him to a burn unit in San Antonio. As the phone calls progress